When the date is finally over, Kyle walks me from his car to my front door. Pearl and Gabriel follow, twenty feet behind, both looking on.

Kyle’s goodbye is mercifully brief. He tells me, more or less, that I was a very suitable, respectable date, and that he found my company very proper and Godly.

Or something. I’m not listening, I’m smiling and trying to pretend that Gabriel’s not standing next to my sister, where I can feel his eyes on me like fingers down my spine.

“Thank you for a nice time,” Kyle finally says.

For one second, I think he’s about to shake my hand, but he just nods.

“Thank you,” I say, because I can’t think of another response.

He walks away. Pearl and Gabriel approach, and Pearl’s through the front door first while Gabriel holds it, gesturing us through.

As I pass him, his fingers brush my lower back again, like he’s teasing me: here’s what dates could be like.

My mother bustles into the entrance hall, beaming. I try to arrange my face to look more excited, and I have no idea whether I succeed.

“Well?” she asks, all smiles. “How did your date go?”

I got proposed to by someone I don’t like, and the best part was the two minutes I spent alone with my bodyguard, I think.

“It was nice,” I say.

“He proposed and she turned him down,” Pearl says, walking past my mother and toward the kitchen.

Her face freezes.

“Oh?” she asks.

I clear my throat, straightening my spine and girding myself because I don’t have a lot of experience standing up to my parents. This is all kind of... new.

“I told him it’s too soon,” I say, twisting my hands together in front of me. “I’ve only been divorced from Lucas for six months, officially, and I don’t want to rush into something else right away.”

She keeps smiling and turns to Gabriel.

“You’re welcome to head to your own quarters,” she says, and even though she sounds friendly, it’s clearly a dismissal. “Thank you so much for chaperoning.”

“Yes ma’am,” Gabriel says, nodding his head at her. “Any time you need me.”

And he walks away, leaving me with my mother, whose smile fades with Gabriel’s footsteps.

“Let’s talk,” she says, and pulls me away.

* * *

My mother’s talk is more of a lecture, and it’s the same thing I’ve been hearing for almost a month now: my options are Kyle or spinsterhood; I’m not going to get a better offer; a woman’s place is married and raising children; it’s unseemly for me to be even in this position, living at home at such an advanced age.

The second I can get away, I retreat to my bedroom and flop dramatically on my bed, still clothed, and try not to cry.

I’ve had six months to figure something out. Six months since my divorce was final and I came back home, and all I’ve done is open a checking account that’s got fifty bucks in it. I could have been coming up with a plan, some third option that wasn’t Kyle and wasn’t living with my parents forever, but instead I moped around and didn’t do crap.

Not that I know what to do. I’ve got an idea of what the end goal is — a place to live and a job that pays for it — but I don’t know how to get there. I have a GED and was homeschooled by my mom, who prefers sewing to math, so I’m not even exactly sure what trigonometry is.

And I can’t get a job without my family figuring it out, so I need a place to live, but a place to live requires money, which people tend to get from jobs. That’s not even the worst part.

The worst part is, if I leave on my own, I’m leaving my family. That’s all there is to it. If I do this, I’m out of the church, out of my family unit, out of nearly everything I’ve ever known. I’d escape my parents, sure, but no more Grace, no more Isaac who thinks he’s a helicopter and Emma with her toothless smile, no more throwing rocks into the river with Joy or smart-ass comments from Zeke.

But then I think again of Kyle’s cold, clammy hands clutching my fingertips, and my stomach turns. I think of him saying, basically, we don’t like each other but we’re desperate.

I remember sex with Lucas, which is all the sex I’ve ever had: under the covers, in the dark, totally silent while he pumped away, eyes closed against the fact that I was never what he really wanted. After the first few times it didn’t hurt any more, but it was about as erotic as brushing my teeth.

And of course, from there my mind goes to the barn, again, which feels like the only thing I think about sometimes, and I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to stop the white heat that’s slithering though my body already.

Kyle. Barn. Kyle. Barn. I’m still lying on my bed where I flopped, arms over my head, as the rest of my family comes upstairs one by one. I listen as they all get ready for bed and then, after a little while longer, it’s quiet.

I sit up. The light underneath my door is gone, so I stand up and turn off my light too, and suddenly I can only see by the sliver of moonlight coming in through the window.

And the very faint lights in the carriage house.

All at once, my mind’s made up. Screw horrible dates with Kyle, screw Pearl telling me I’m going to be a old maid, screw being damaged goods.

I know what I want, and for once, I’m going to go after it.

I still stand there, by the window, for a few more minutes, pretending like maybe I’ll talk myself into behaving. I don’t.

I close the curtains and turn away, open a drawer, reach in, and grab the vodka. I take one big swallow for courage, but it feels like my insides are doused with gasoline and I just held a match to them and now my body’s enveloped in this sinuous, writhing heat.

This is stupid. It’s easy to get caught, and in the best case scenario, my parents throw me out of their house with nothing.

But for the first time since I asked Lucas for a divorce, I’m doing something. I’m not smiling and nodding and going along, I’m acting like an adult and taking charge.

I’m opening my bedroom door, tiptoeing down the stairs, sneaking to the pantry with the window, every muscle and nerve on high alert, the vodka snaking through my veins and whispering go on, go on in my ear.

And I open the window and drop through into the cool night air, leaving my father’s house.